What do you do (or did) for a living?

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When we got to England I couldn't break 90. Barley kept under 100. Started working at the base golf course. When we left I was a 3 handicap. Shot in the low 80's at Carnoustie and the Old Course at St Andrews. Both British Open courses. After I retired from the golf business and had to pay to play scores went up. Now I only play once a year with my friends in Oregon. Don't play so well now. But I have hope every time I tee it up.
Last time I played the Old Course it was £25. 40 years ago....
 
Well.....before I settled into a position at PartsUnknown University And Bar And Grill, Mountain Fries Our Speciality:
  • washed dishes in a restaurant. In the 70s, when parts of those bake-n-serve loaves came back untouched, it was tossed in to make turkey dressing the next day. Did you want to know about the dishes of vegetables, or the uneaten ham/beef/turkey/gravy that came back? I didn't think so...
  • nailed heels on shoes and went home stinky and dusty every day.
  • helped my cousin lay carpet & vinyl 2 summers. Learned enough to have professionals do our living room.;) Also helped him build his house.
  • spent the occasional Friday night as helper on an 18-wheeler. One driver found out I was an astronomy nut and went crazy, we talked so much that the work ended quickly. He ended up sticking me in the driver's seat for a little while. Okay, I asked for it. Kinda fun, really.
  • loaded and hauled lumber locally. Splinters galore. That summer I and the other kid unloaded a railcar of lumber. Not fun in July.
  • teaching assistant/lab assistant/whatever, kept 1st year chem students from damaging one another (I was a sophomore).
  • promoted to stockroom/prep tech because (tooting my📯 cuz I'm proud of it) no one in the entire dept knew as much about practical prep of solutions as I did. The Pchem prof was so glad to be able to hand me a list of what was needed, and forget about it. Trusted me more than she did the gen chem prof.🤣
  • clerk at a Golden Pantry in Athens GA. Evenings and weekends. In a less-desirable section of town. (following may have appeared before, sorry) Third-most-important event was on the first week. Some idiot drove off with the gas spout still in place. Pulled over a pump. Fire at the base. I'm 22, of COURSE I panic! Hit OFF button, grab extinguisher, pull pin...it's empty. Run back inside, grab another extinguisher...it's empty too. Run across street to gas station, grab theirs, lug it across street. Fire is out. Someone with less panic-in-the-brain dumped a bag of ice on the fire. I did that job for two summers and weekends full time and a semester part-time. Never occurred to me to quit.
  • took census in summer 1980 cuz the college not only hired you for 9 months, they paid you on that arrangement. Summers were tough. In eastern KY. Y'all know how some rocketeers can go on and on about their rockets and flights? No?🤣 Well son, it happens. And other people have the same attitudes about their activities. You have not lived until you've heard an old guy go on about the dozens of clogging steps that existed. Or had an 80yo appear at the front door with dribbles of tobacco juice down each side of her chin. I was told of workers who got stopped on backwoods roads, by guys carrying guns (moonshining is undoubtedly still big there, as it still is in Land Between The Lakes).
Planning on moving back there soon. When the world ends, eastern KY will still be at least 40 years behind the times, so I'll be fine till I die.🤣

In all seriousness: most of this s**t was not fun. But I was paid $2 or a bit more per hour, back when big-store bread was around 25-50 cents a loaf; call it six loaves an hour. Expecting people to do any kind of work, let alone that kind of rough/dangerous/scut work, for less than two loaves an hour is unconscionable. Especially at today's artificially-inflated and shrinkflated prices of EVERYthing. Yeah, I just preached...we can have it out at LDRS if ya want.🤣:angiefavorite:
I miss Kentucky and TN. Always wanted to move back but with my shrinking reserve of years I don't think it will happen.
 
I had a job in a mailroom one summer that probably ruined me. We'd get done with our work by maybe 1 PM most days, and I'd be itching to do something. The other guys, who were close to retirement, told me to just take it easy. I felt funny, but I read several novels at work that summer. I even got most of the way through Gravity's Rainbow. We had an unusual, two week heat wave, and sometimes I'd hang around some biology lab space that had been set up but not yet occupied. Nice and cool. The air conditioning in our

Have that book for over two years.
Made it almost halfway through. Still grinding away at it.....
 
There have been some amazing and varied careers on this thread so far. Mines far more mundane (so far), though possibly more typical.

I did various small jobs while at school like moving furniture and working in a bookshop, then went to uni and got an Electronics Engineering degree. Did some small stuff again, but my first real full time job was for a company designing and making major appliances (think washing machines, ovens, etc) where I developed my technical and leadership skills. After a few (6) years, got put in charge of the electronics hardware team. In that role I've been able to do a ton of coaching of new grads as they come through (which I really enjoy) and been involved in determining the direction of our products.

Engineering has it's own ups and downs as a career. Pay is ok, but not great. When things go wrong people come to you and expect you to have the answer. Sometimes you do, and sometimes you don't. If you don't, the expectation is that you'll have the answer tomorrow.

Overall I'm reasonably happy with where I've landed up, and saw enough on the way to realise that while there are better jobs out there, there are also plenty that are worse and actually mines pretty good!
 
Joined the USAF after High School and was trained in Telecommunication systems, then Computer Communication Systems. Got out after 6 years (planned to stay 20+ but 1st wife had other plans). Got a job with a Telecommunications company, built the NOC, and their Internet Provider business and then left to become a Network Consultant. Did that for a couple of years until I got tired of traveling all the time.

Took a position with a large global corporation as a Senior Network Engineer, rebuilt all of the networks at all of the production facilities with Cisco gear and after 19 years was laid off by my manager because I made more money than he did and thought I wanted his job (found out later he was also let go after they found out why he got rid of me).

Landed my current position with another large multi-national corporation as the Infrastructure Architect where I design and implement Cisco networking infrastructures (LAN/WAN/SDWAN/VOIP/WIRELESS/etc) for all of the 250+ US locations we manage. Have a team of 5 voice and data engineers to monitor the day-to-day needs.

Just a few more years to retirement when the real work starts :)
 
From a kid till time k joined the Navy was always working with my dad doing plumbing and heating in upstate NY. Summer was furnace cleaning. hated it- but few bucks made let me buy my model rockets (Centuri mostly).

Did part time jobs with friends n summer picking cones and seeds for couple of bucks a bushel.

Learned the electrical and plumbing trades which proved invaluable later in Navy and home ownership.

79 - Joined the Navy Seabees as an Engineering Aide (civil engineering tech). Traveled the world : designed and built and surveyed roads and buildings and ball parks.

Started to get interested in computers in 82 with a big IBM (playing “The Oregon Trail”. Later tried Fortran and nope.

As time went on (still in Navy) and PCs were becoming more popular, i self taught mysef PC troubleshooting and building: design and install networks (LANs/WANs) as “collateral duty” while still doing “civill engineering work.

when I retired in 99- I was more into IT, but do miss construction- Am currently in the IT world (Cyber Security) and am looking at finally retiring from Dept of Defense end of the year.

For past 12 years, I have done a lot of STEM work and we teach a cyber camp (Palmetto Cyber Camp) in South Carolina.

Last year I did “water bottle rockets in addition to some Cyber Courses and this year , I got the Ok to use solid propellant engines and the kids will build an Estes Alpha III and Friday will be over 100 launches. (Lookng forward to it- but need to dig into lsatety with NAR, etc.

I’m def resdy to retire due to health. I’m not a teen in the 70s anymore. love what I do and getting kids excited about STEM, just can’t do what I want anymore. “Cancer sucks”.

Overall. Am excited about getting back into this hobby and getting some kids interested in it for our Cyber launch.

And maybe next year if fully retired can go to the launch clubs and watch the high power kits fly. (C6-7 biggest i ever flown). “And lost those kits) 😉
 
I just read through this thread for the second time, very interesting.

I'm going on a second parenting. I have a kid that went through college (through a curriculum I thought was a waste). I'm going to pay again for the STEM education he was better suited for 10 years ago, now.

But, I was nice 10 years ago, and he had a scholarship.
 
1986 - 2016
Royal Canadian Navy as a communicator. I started my career sending messages using morse code by flashing light and ended it leading a team purchasing satellite comms equipment.
2016 - 2018
Worked on the administration side of a construction company as Project coordinator. I enjoyed it.
2018 - 2023
Chief of the Ship (CotS) HMCS Sackville. She is the last WWII Flower Class corvette and Canada's Official Naval Memorial. You can see her as "Dicky" in the Tom Hanks movie Greayhound. CotS is in charge of the day to day operation of the ship. My time included a major hull refit similar to what USS Texas just had done, only on a much smaller scale!
2023 - present
On sabbatical. I bought a F150 in 2021 that I am still paying for so I should get a job to do that, but I am enjoying the time off ...
 
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